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Research Summaries

Using the drop-down menu below, read about highlighted scientific news for patients from ASCO's Annual Meetings, Symposia, and medical journals for the past three years. You can select a specific year, meeting or publication, and/or a specific topic, such as a type of cancer. Selecting "All" will take you to a complete list of articles that appear under all categories.

This includes ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology and its scientific meetings, including the ASCO Annual Meeting, a five-day meeting held each May/June. To read the Annual Meeting summaries compiled into a yearly newsletter, you can also review Research Round Up: News for Patients from the ASCO Annual Meeting.Don’t forget to check out audio podcasts and videos about this news, as well. And a list of upcoming Symposia can be found here. And, in addition to the highlighted studies below, thousands of scientific abstracts are released each year at different ASCO meetings. To search the entire collection of meeting abstracts, visit ASCO's website.

Results from a new study led by the National Cancer Institute suggest that adding chemotherapy with the drug docetaxel (Docefrez, Taxotere) to standard hormone therapy lengthens the lives of men newly diagnosed with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.

In an analysis of two ongoing studies, researchers found that exemestane (Aromasin) was more effective at preventing hormone-sensitive breast cancer from returning for premenopausal women than tamoxifen (Nolvadex, Soltamox) when each drug was paired with ovarian function suppression.

In a recent study, researchers found that the combination of olaparib and cediranib (Recentin) kept recurrent ovarian cancer from worsening for almost nine months longer than treatment with olaparib alone.

Results from a recent study show that the drug lenvatinib could become a new, effective treatment option for patients with differentiated thyroid cancer that is resistant to standard radioiodine (RAI) therapy.

Early results from an ongoing study show that ibrutinib (Imbruvica) keeps relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) from worsening for longer than ofatumumab (Arzerra), a standard treatment option for relapsed or refractory CLL.

Results from a new study show that combining the targeted therapy ramucirumab (Cyramza) with standard chemotherapy lengthens the lives of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Targeted therapy is a treatment that targets the cancer’s specific genes, proteins, or the tissue environment that contributes to cancer growth and survival.

According to new research, people who are expected to live less than a year can safely stop taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, known as statins, without shortening their lives. In fact, discontinuing statins provided a number of important benefits, including reducing symptoms, having to take fewer pills, and improving overall quality of life.

A new study demonstrates the benefits of a phone-based palliative care support program for caregivers of people with advanced cancer. The results suggest that the earlier palliative care services are introduced to caregivers, the better they will be able to cope with the caregiving experience.

Early research suggests that lowering the dose of radiation therapy for some people with oropharyngeal cancer is an effective treatment option and may help reduce long-term side effects. This new approach customizes the radiation dose based on a person’s response to initial chemotherapy, as well as other factors known to affect a person’s chance of recovery, such as whether the tumor has tested positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV), the tumor’s size, and the person’s smoking history.

According to new findings from a phase III clinical trial, women taking zoledronic acid (Zometa) for breast cancer that has spread to the bone, called metastases, can safely scale back to a once-every-three-months schedule after finishing a year of monthly treatments.

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